[244] Persea gratissima R. P. In other places he calls it Aguacate. Palta is the Quichua word.
[246] The fruit of the passion flower.
[247] The licentiate Pascual de Andagoya came to the Indies in the train of Pedrarias, governor of Panama, and was appointed governor of San Juan, including the coast of the Pacific between the gulf of San Miguel and the river of San Juan, in 1539. He landed at the mouth of the river Dagua, and marched inland until he came to the town of Cali, which he claimed as coming within the limits of his jurisdiction. At this time Belalcazar was in Spain, petitioning for the government of Popayan. When he received it, with the title of Adelantado, he came out by way of Panama, landed at Buenaventura, and marched to Cali. Here the people received him as their governor, and he arrested Andagoya as an intruder, and sent him prisoner to Spain. Andagoya was a learned man, and wrote a Relacion of his expedition, which occupies sixty pages of Navarrete’s work.
[248] Mollien describes Buenaventura as consisting of a dozen huts inhabited by negroes, a barrack with eleven soldiers, a battery of three guns, and the residence of the governor built of straw and bamboo, on an island called Kascakral, covered with grass, brambles, mud, serpents and toads. Travels in Colombia, 1824, p. 299.
[249] Or Jamondi.
[251] Grange or farm.
[252] After the fall of Robledo, our author attached his fortunes to those of Belalcazar.
Sebastian de Belalcazar was born in a village called Belalcazar, on the borders of Estremadura and Andalucia. He was the child of a peasant, and one day, having killed the only donkey possessed by his family because it was slow in getting over a miry road, the ill-conditioned young rascal run away, fearing to return home, and reached Seville in 1514. At that time Pedrarias was enlisting men for his expedition to the isthmus of Darien, and the fugitive took service as a soldier in one of the ships. He knew not of any other name by which he was called, save Sebastian, and to it was added the name of his birthplace. It is said that his father’s name was Moyano. On one occasion his sagacity saved the governor Pedrarias when he was nearly lost in the woods near Darien, and from that time his fortune was made. Pedrarias sent him in the expedition to Nicaragua, where he assisted in the founding of the city of Leon, and he afterwards followed Pizarro to Peru. Pizarro appointed him governor of San Miguel, whence he marched, with a force of one hundred and forty well-armed soldiers, to the city of Quito in 1533. In 1536 he set out from Quito, discovered Popayan and Pasto, and the valley of the Cauca, and reached Bogota in 1538. Thence he descended the Magdalena and returned to Spain, where, to check the ambition of the Pizarros, Charles V granted him the government of Popayan, with the title of adelantado. He went out again by way of Panama, landed at Buenaventura on the Pacific coast, and marched to Cali, where he seized Andagoya and established his own authority. Afterwards he was wounded fighting on the side of the Viceroy Vela against Gonzalo Pizarro at Añaquito, he treated Robledo with harsh cruelty, and he marched to the assistance of the President Gasca against Gonzalo Pizarro, on which occasion he was accompanied by our author. Briceño, a judge, who had married the widow of Robledo, was sent to examine into the conduct of Belalcazar, and, urged by his wife, was not very favourably disposed towards him. Indeed he condemned him to death for the murder of Robledo. Belalcazar appealed, and set out for Spain with a heavy heart. He died at Carthagena on his way home in the year 1550.